Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Job · About this commentary
Yahweh: Behemoth
Job 40:15-24
15 “See now behemoth, which I made as well as you. He eats grass as an ox. · WEB
A creature Job cannot handle is described at length and never identified, and the one thing said about its maker is that he holds its weapon.
See now behemoth, which I made as well as you Job 40:15.
The first clause of the introduction is the one that matters. Whatever this creature is, it was made, and it was made by the same hand that made the man being addressed. It is a fellow creature, not a rival.
The description is physical and specific. He eats grass as an ox — a plant-eater, not a predator. His strength is in his thighs and in the muscles of his belly. He moves his tail like a cedar. His bones are like tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron Job 40:16–18.
He lives in water and shade: under the lotus trees, in the covert of the reed and the marsh, with willows around him Job 40:21–22. And he is unmoved by flood — he doesn't tremble. He is confident, though the Jordan swells even to his mouth Job 40:23.
The closing question is about capture. Shall any take him when he is on the watch, or pierce through his nose with a snare? Job 40:24. Nose-piercing is how a beast is led. This one cannot be led.
What the text does not do is tell a reader what it is. Every marker is given — diet, build, habitat, temperament, the fact that he cannot be taken — and no name. Readers have long proposed identifications, and the passage does not settle any of them. What it establishes is the profile, and the profile is complete enough that the point does not depend on the name: there is a creature in the world that Job cannot manage, and God made it.
One line stands apart from the natural history and carries more weight than the rest. He is the chief of the ways of God. He who made him gives him his sword Job 40:19.
He is first in rank among God's works, and his weapon — his own equipment for violence — is described as issued to him. Even the creature's capacity for damage is on loan from the one who made it. That is the same arrangement the prologue described in the councils, where a power to harm was granted, bounded, and never independent Job 1:12.
And it answers the challenge two paragraphs earlier. God had invited Job to crush the wicked and bring down the proud Job 40:11–12. Before that argument goes any further, Job is shown one grass-eating animal in a swamp that he could not take with a rope.
held with reason What this mark means